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Disabled boy receives National Bravery Award - Volume 3 Issue 3: Disability News and Information Service for India

Disabled boy receives National Bravery Award

DNIS News Network – Hotilal walks with difficulty
and can barely speak. But when it came to rescuing drowning women, Hotilal displayed
exemplary courage as others stood and watched. His act of bravery has won him
the National Bravery Award 2004.

Fifty-eight year old Mayadevi had come to Mathura with her niece, seventeen-year-old
Jyoti, and eleven-year-old granddaughter, Tanu. Hailing from faraway Alwar in
Rajasthan they had come to take a holy dip in the river Yamuna on the occasion
of Mauni Amavasya, an auspicious Hindu festival in the month of June last year.

Jyoti was swept away by an underwater current and Mayadevi and Tanu tried to
pull her out of the water. But they were also sucked into the current. Watching
from the banks, Hotilal, the son of a local boatman, rushed into the water and
pulled out Tanu and the much heavier Mayadevi in turns. Jyoti had already drowned
and sadly, Mayadevi could not be saved.

Even Hotilal’s father, Jairam Mallah, is aghast at his son’s act
of bravery. “Hotilal can barely manage to change his own clothes let alone
attend school. We have to help him even to put on clothes. I really do not know
how he did it,” said Mallah.

“My son is very brave and wants to study. But there are no schools for
children like him near my house and he is suffering as a result,” said
Mallah. Speaking on the occasion, his family said that the local authorities
had still not given him a disability certificate.